14 



practically no appmitriation made for carrying it on. It has been a hard work 

 to maintain. A few hundred dollars was all that was available, and the fact 

 that I held a position in the university of the State and incidentally carried 

 the work of the farmers' institute on was the only way in which we were able 

 to carry it forward. Our speakers were not paid. The few hundred dollars 

 we had we used for printing and a few incidental expenses. The railroads of 

 that State may be said to have carried on the work. They supplied trans- 

 portation without limit upon the request of the superintendent, and aside from 

 that there was practically nothing to go upon except the kind-heartedness and 

 the thoughtfulness and the progressiveness of the men who did the actual work 

 traveling up and down that State and carrying to the farmers, as we tried to 

 carry, something which they perhaps could not otherwise have gotten. And 

 it has been a matter of pleasure to me to see the better form into which the 

 institute work has come. It has come to be better organized. It has come to 

 be more truly and clearly an educational work. And so the work which some 

 of us tried to start in a small way has grown to be something largo and impor- 

 tant. A few States at that time, even, had their work pretty well organized, 

 but in general I suppose there were not more than four or five States that made 

 appropriations which were sufficient without the support of the railroads or 

 the professors in the agricultural colleges. Without that there were perhaps 

 not more than four or five States in the work which could have existed even as 

 we carried it on in those days. The growth of the work, the establishment of 

 an office for the study of that work in the Department of Agriculture, and a 

 good many things of that nature, which have come up to this time in such good 

 form as they occupy to-day, were only outlines. I remember that in the last 

 one or two meetings that I attended, and of which I was secretary, the thing 

 that we claimed then to ourselves, although I think we expected they would be 

 some years in the future, was that there might be a man in the Department of 

 Agriculture who might study the \^ork and go out and do what he could to 

 make it possible to carry on that line of work in the States which did not then 

 have aid. I presume that there are two or three times as many States carrying 

 on that work now as then, and I know there are three or four times as many 

 States making appropriations to maintain the work as a regular part of the 

 State work as there were then. 



After aH, when you get back to the beginning of things, whether it be farmers' 

 institute or the work which is done in the colleges or the experiment stations or 

 the work which is done in expositions, it is educational work. I have a feeling 

 that in leaving the institute and taking up the work which I have had to carry 

 in the last three expositions that I have been doing educational work, and I 

 believe that we all have a right to consider that the work which we do in insti- 

 tutes is an educational work of a character which could scarcely be carried on 

 in any other way. 



It is a pleasure to me. as chief of the department of agriculture of this expo- 

 sition, which is held in the center, nearly, of what we believe to be the greatest 

 agricultural portion of the country, to have you meet with us. It was a pleasure 

 to me to extend, representing the exposition, an invitation to hold your meetings 

 here. It causes some regret that I know so few of you and to feel that in the 

 comparatively short time I have been out of the work it has grown and brought 

 in new people until I am almost a stranger, so far as my relation to your par- 

 ticular work is concerned. But that ought to give pleasure only, for it is only 

 by growth and advancement and by bringing in new life that a work of this sort 

 can exist. It seemed to me in the last years I was in it that the time was 

 coming when there must be a change, an advance in the methods. I remember 

 talking in almost a pessimistic strain in the last days I was connected with the 



